Mary Keldermans is recounting the story of the finding of the Christ child in the temple — the Gospel of Luke’s depiction in which Jesus is left behind following Passover in Jerusalem and found by Mary and Joseph three days later among the temple elders — when she remembers her own brush with a lost child.

“We had gone to a magic show at Sangamon State University (now the University of Illinois Springfield) and we were going to Howard Johnson afterwards for ice cream,” she recalled. “On our way there, one of my sons yells out, ‘Clare (my 4-year-old daughter) isn’t here.’ I said, ‘What do you mean Clare isn’t here?’

“So I tore back to the campus, panicked, overwhelmed at the horror of what I’d done, and there she was, with two older gentlemen holding her by the hands. She’s crying. I’m crying. And I just said, ‘I’m sorry. I’m sorry.’ ”

What’s missing, added Keldermans, is that for so long, Roman Catholics have only heard the interpretation of Scriptures, including the story of the lost child, from male perspectives, mostly through homilies.

“I can look at that story,” said Kelderman, who has six children and five grandchildren, “and have a different experience. Mary was a Jewish mother who was worried sick about her son. I know what she felt like. I know what she felt like to have a teething child, to have teenagers.

“It brings the story closer to Jesus being my brother.”

‘Door is closed’

A lifelong Catholic and Springfield native, Keldermans takes her biggest personal and professional plunge next month when she is ordained as a priest for Roman Catholic Womenpriests Inc. in a ceremony at the Abraham Lincoln Unitarian Universalist Congregation in Springfield.

The group has about 150 ordained priests worldwide and in 29 states in the U.S. Keldermans, 58, will be the first Womenpriest in the Springfield area.

Several groups that have splintered from the Roman Catholic Church, including the United Independent Catholic Church, which has diocesan headquarters and a community in Springfield, ordain women, though there are none currently serving in the area.

The Roman Catholic Church forbids women to be ordained for a number of reasons. Most recently, Pope Francis, citing Pope John Paul II’s definitive 1994 apostolic letter, said the “door is closed” regarding the matter.

In 2010, the church labeled the ordination of women as graviora delicta, or a grave crime, equating it with pedophilia, possession of child pornography and sexual abuse of mentally disabled adults.

In a written statement provided to The State Journal-Register, Springfield Catholic Bishop Thomas John Paprocki warns that Keldermans and the presider, Bishop Joan Clark Houk of Pittsburgh, will incur “automatic excommunication” because “the attempted ordination of a female is invalid.” The site of the ordination, added Paprocki, “is itself a clear message that this will not be a Catholic ceremony.”

Page 2 of 3 - Local bishops have warned practicing Catholics against participation in other such ordinations and the subsequent “simulation” of sacraments by women priests.

Always a priest

Keldermans, who has worked for several Springfield parishes and received an award from the Springfield diocese for her service to the church, said her ordination is a calling from God. She denied that the act is separating her from the church and will not accept excommunication, which she said means that she can’t receive sacraments in the church.

Keldermans also said the ordination is “not a power grab.” Keldermans paid for classes that Womenpriests required of her, and she will receive no salary from the group, paying for everything herself, down to the sacramental wine.

When she asked one of her daughters what she thought about her becoming a priest, Keldermans said she told her, “Mom, you’ve always been a priest.”

“My idea of being a priest is being a prayer leader in the community,” said Keldermans. “I’m formalizing what I’ve always been doing.”

Change from inside

The Rev. Elsie McGrath is dressed in a hooded, white robe and purple stole as she greets a handful of worshipers, most in their 60s or 70s, with a quartet of college-age students, prior to Mass at Therese of Divine Peace Inclusive Community in the chapel of a Unitarian church near Forest Park in St. Louis.

In 2007, nearly 800 people crammed into a St. Louis synagogue for her ordination, creating an international incident that pitted the diminutive 75-year-old McGrath against then-St. Louis Archbishop Raymond Burke.

“They don’t come here out of fear,” said McGrath, of the smaller numbers, though she acknowledges that some people are confused over whether the community is Roman Catholic.

McGrath, who has mentored Keldermans during her ordination process, said the first group of Womenpriests was ordained in 2002 by an unidentified Roman Catholic bishop.

The group maintains that it isn’t schismatic, or apart, from the church, and that it is working to push the issue from the inside.

“For the most part, people are favorable towards women ordinations and against the hierarchy of the church,” said McGrath.

“Many women are surrounded by communities asking them to be priests,” said Erin Saiz Hanna, executive director of the Women’s Ordination Conference. “We say the church is not necessarily Rome, but the people of the God, and the people support the ordination of women.”

Answering a call

Keldermans said she knew traditional avenues to being a priest weren’t open for her. Spiritual support from a prominent nun, Sister Joan Chittister, and a small women’s group in Springfield buoyed Keldermans after she stopped attending Mass five years ago.

Page 3 of 3 - The final straw, she said, was hearing gays and lesbians being demonized as “morally intrinsic” and being told who to vote for by church officials.

“The manmade stuff of the Catholic Church was killing me,” she admitted. “You don’t use the Eucharist as a club to keep people in line.”

When Keldermans finally pursued the Womenpriests route, she did so under an assumed name, fearing repercussions. Even three years into the process and on the doorstep of her May 3 ordination, some of Keldermans’ friends didn’t know about her decision.

The argument that the Catholic Church doesn’t have the authority to allow women priests because Christ chose only men as apostles doesn’t hold any weight for Keldermans. Women are CEOs of companies, she pointed out, and some Catholic nuns are running day-to-day activities in parishes in the Springfield diocese as parish life coordinators .

“We’re told that God will not call (women), that the Spirit doesn’t call (women), but there’s no reason for women not to be called,” said Keldermans. “What sense does it make that you trust them to run the parish, but you bring in men for the Mass and sacraments?

“She’s doing the priestly stuff, if you say she’s a leader of prayer.”

Not a protest

Keldermans said she has the support of her husband, Steve, and her children, all of whom live in Springfield. They may or may not be part of her new faith community — Keldermans jokes that her husband will be “a charter member” — that will begin in people’s homes.

Keldermans insisted her ordination isn’t a protest, but part of something she thinks will be commonplace in years to come.

“This is a calling to bring the church to a fuller grandeur,” she said. “I’m joining in where women should have a place anyway. We are a movement in the church. We are not separating ourselves.